I Need to Find Help to Pay off My College Loans

You can get a hardship forebarance. I am not sure how to apply, but my husband did it which means the information cannot be hard to find or he would have asked me to do it :)

You need to call the loan holders and tell them your situation. They will offer you some different options. There is a differment, forberance etc. They are based on your situation. You can get an economic hardship differment or just a plain old I dont have the money to pay forberance. I have almost 50,000 and I havent paid on them yet. However, my credit is ok and I am not being chased by them. I just havent been in a financial position to deal with them. In some of the situations you will continue to accru interest and you can choose to pay just that or not at all. In the economic hardship differment, there is a time limit, but you do not continue to accru interest. the most important thing is to communicate with them. If you ignore them they will create chaos in your life. I know this from experience. Dont stress about it. Like I said I havent paid more than a couple hundred dollars and I graduated in 2003!! Peace.

Hi P..
You can put your loans on forbearance until you have a job. Also, there is a 6 month grace period after you finish school until you need to start paying them back. I'm so sorry you are in such a stressful situation. Look into Charter schools in the Chicago area as well. Maybe you can get a job as a teacher assistant until a full time job opens in a school. I am a teacher and I know how hard it is to find a job - you could also try to get a job as a Cadre. You are a full time sub as a cadre, usually employed by one school and you get health insurance and other teacher benefits as well. The pay isn't as good as a regular teacher salary, but it's not so bad.
Good luck. Call the board of ed about cadre jobs.
Aryel

There is a program where if you work in a school where most of the students are below poverty level for 5 years- a certain percentage of your loans will be paid back- I think it is either through the US or IL Govt. That is what I plan on doing later on when I go back to school and teaching...

Hi P.,
My name is M., do you want to earn extra money on the side? If so go to this website
www.greatjoboptions.com
I work w/ quite a few people who go to school full time & also work from home, or people who work full time & work from home on a very part time basis.
Then if you need more info, go to forbesmagazine.com
investormagazine.com & if you have any questions pls contact me either way if you are interested or not
M.
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Hi I want to add to what Dee said. Congratulations on all your hard work and perserverence to make this happen! You ROCK! It sounds like you have really worked hard and long to make something happen for yourself and you should be really really proud. I'm proud of you and I never even met you! It will work out with the loans-trust me. Do call them. Also your career will work out-there is a shortage of educators. You should look into doing substitute teaching for a while. I'm pretty sure there is a shortage there as well. There is some process you have to go through but it would be good to do while you are finding a regular teaching job. Good luck!

If it is a federal loan, it is an extremely easy process to get either a forbearance or deferment. You can also look into restructuring your loans. I have a laughably long loan term (17 years? 30 years?) for loans I had about 10 years ago. The interest rates are low, too.

If you are not employed you can apply for hardship deferment if these are regular student loans. Just call the holder of your loan and send in the paper work.

Absolutely call and get a forebearance for your loans. That does not forgive the amount of loans you have, but it temporarily suspends your payments for a period of time. I had to do that when I first entered the workforce because I went to a private university and was teaching at a catholic school making pennies. Thankfully, I will be making my last payment sometime this year and will be out from underneath the loans - yay!

For CPS job postings see the following link http://www.cps-humanresources.org/Careers/per_bull.htm.

Every Wednesday new jobs are posted.

Good luck.

It sounds like you've gotten all the advice you need - forbearance/deferment is the way to go, just make the call! :-) I just wanted to add that you should be very proud of yourself for all that you have accomplished...getting those degrees/certificates isn't easy even when you don't have all those kids to raise and family to support. Great job!

BTW - Perkins loans can be forgiven over time (5 years) if you teach in a "shortage" subject area...if you have one, it's probably your smallest loan, but still definitely worth looking into.

Normally, you can ask for a deferment of the loans until you are working. You might also consider nanny/babysitting jobs while you are waiting for work in your field. Lots of people post on craigslist and also there is a mommail list serve in oak park that posts for nanny/babysitters.

If you have federal student loans, contact them and let them know your situation and they will likely defer them longer. I was out of steady work for 6 months and they deferred them due to my economic status. It was very easy, I just had to call and tell them what was going on. They asked me how long I thought it would last and I wasn't billed again until the month I had indicated. As for private loans, I'm not sure how easy it is, but I would still contact them and see if there's anything they can do to lower or stop your payments altogether until you are back on your feet. Good luck!!

Talk to you loan company you might be able to get a forbearance, deferment for an economic hardship.